Emco FB2 bench top milling machine, Near Peterborough, $1700

[JustaDB]

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[boilerhouse]

 

[trevj]

That is an excellent price for a very capable and well built, bench top machine!

One of my 'Regrets' moments, was flinching when I was offered one of these by a Machine tool dealer in Edmonton, some years back. By the time I was half block up the street and got pulled over to make the call back, it was already spoken for!

 

[slow-poke]

That is an excellent price for a very capable and well built, bench top machine!

One of my 'Regrets' moments, was flinching when I was offered one of these by a Machine tool dealer in Edmonton, some years back. By the time I was half block up the street and got pulled over to make the call back, it was already spoken for!

It looks similar in size to a RF30 and both are round column.

Am I correct to assume these are better than a RF30?

If so, what makes them better?

 

[YYCHM]

No Longer Available - Bench top Milling Machine $1,700.00​

 

[trevj]

It looks similar in size to a RF30 and both are round column.

Am I correct to assume these are better than a RF30?

If so, what makes them better?

It is smaller and lighter than an RF-30 mill, has a Morse #2 spindle.

It is made in Austria, and to a pretty high standard.

They are a well made, though not particularly heavy built, mill that was intended as companion to the Emco Maximat 11 and 13 inch swing lathes, and would be a great pair up with a Myford or similar size machine that used MT2 tooling.

 

[Mcgyver]

If so, what makes them better?

I haven't had an RF30 apart, but I did scrape a Chinese mill X/Y mill table because I want to demonstrate scraping dovetails. That POS was unbelievable, to the point where there were ground surface that weren't bearing and they left the bearing surfaces rough milled.

otoh I have had several Emco machines apart. Emco products are well made and come from culture that took pride in making excellent machine tools. They're not Schaublins, but they are well done.

So your question strikes me as more along the lines of what is the different between a good and a poorly made machine. Things like the quality of materials, castings, design, quality of parts, motor, size to weight and especially bearings, all come into play. For example, I can put skate bearings in a spindle or $800 SKF P4 bearings.

However the fit of the mating parts is the biggest factor imo. When cutting forces are applied, you want the geometry to stay pretty much the same. That only happens if parts mate to high standard (like .0002 or better), i.e. when the bearing surface bears all over so the part can't flex as its support by its mate.

imo its hard fully get this this unless you've surveyed one, measured and printed all the mating parts, seen how bad they can be and then tried to rectify it via reconditioning. It gives an appreciate for the challenges in achieving correct bearing fits between mating parts and also just how bad it can be on a low end machine. And getting that right is an expensive bit in machine tool construction,. (like any finer tolerance work) Lower cost machines are lower partially because of lower labour costs and partially from short cuts on these bearing fits.

Because of this, the older better quality machines have great appeal if still in good shape. The offsetting force, and why its a age old home shop machinist debate (old vs new) is the question mark around wear on the older machine, better build machine tool. (is it still great?), and to some extent, depending on location, availability.

Wanting to get my cake and eat it as well, I learned to recondition them so it doesn't matter if they're not that great because of wear, we'll just eliminate it!